Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Barbara van Schewick is a Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering in Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and a leading expert on net neutrality.

Paddy Leerssen was the Open Internet Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society in 2017-2018. AT CIS, he worked on digital media and communications law in general, and net neutrality policy in particular. He is now a PhD Candidate at the University of Amsterdam, where his dissertation focuses on the impacts of algorithmic content recommendations on the governance of media pluralism. Paddy holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar, an LL.M. from the University of Amsterdam, and an LL.B. from Maastricht University.

Marvin Ammori is a leading First Amendment lawyer and Internet policy expert. He was instrumental to the adoption of network neutrality rules in the US and abroad–having been perhaps the nation’s leading legal advocate advancing network neutrality–and also instrumental to the defeat of the SOPA and PIPA copyright/censorship bills.

Emily Baxter is a research associate for Women's Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, focusing on women's and families' economic security, women's leadership, and work-family balance. She previously worked as the special assistant for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center. In the fall of 2012, Emily was a field organizer for President Obama’s re-election campaign near her hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania.

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In the lead-up to the FCC's historic vote in December 2017 to repeal all net neutrality protections, 22 million comments were filed to the agency.

But unfortunately, millions of those comments were fake. Some of the fake comment were part of sophisticated campaigns that filed fake comments using the names of real people - including journalists, Senators and dead people.

October is 'National Cybersecurity Awareness Month' in the United States. As many of you know, this already rather interdisciplinary field of 'cyber' has grown again over the past year or so --- now often encompassing issues like so-called 'fake news', disinformation, data analytics, and other current issues that further demonstrate some of the consequences resulting from the convergence of technology, adversaries, and society.

In a New York Times review of Edward Tenner’s book The Efficiency Paradox, Gal Beckerman observes that a key point is not simply to watch how much time we spend using technology, but to remember that “the tools we’ve invented to improve our lives are just that, tools, to be picked up and put down. We wield them.”

Which pretty succinctly states the main point of this entire series of blog posts: that human agency matters. Or, perhaps more directly, that while we all know human agency matters, we all too frequently overlook that point. This post (on Labor Day, 2018) thus asks what is the real value of human agency? By identifying value in it, I hope to set the stage for future posts on the urgency of fostering greater awareness of it.

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This week, the House will vote on H.R. 1644, introduced by Rep. Mike Doyle, which would reinstate the net neutrality protections of the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order as of January 19, 2017. H.R. 1096, a competing measure introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, purports to restore the Open Internet Order’s rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, as well as the transparency rule.

Both bills have been touted as means to restore comprehensive net neutrality protections for all Americans.

In the leadup to the FCC's historic vote in December 2017 to repeal all net neutrality protections, 22 million comments were filed to the agency.

But unfortunately, millions of those comments were fake. Some of the fake comment were part of sophisticated campaigns that filed fake comments using the names of real people - including journalists, Senators and dead people.

Reconciling Copyright with Cumulative Creativity: The Third Paradigm examines the long history of creativity, from cave art to digital remix, in order to demonstrate a consistent disparity between the traditional cumulative mechanics of creativity and modern copyright policies.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

"Barbara van Schewick, a professor at Stanford Law School and the director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford, says that California’s new net neutrality law is on firm legal footing. “An agency that has no power to regulate has no power to preempt the states, according to case law,” van Schewick said in a statement Sunday.* “When the FCC repealed the 2015 Open Internet Order, it said it had no power to regulate broadband internet access providers.

"“If an agency wants to pre-empt states from regulating an industry, it has to have authority to regulate that industry,” says Ryan Singel, a fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society."

"Barbara van Schewick, a professor at Stanford Law School, says the California bill is on solid legal ground and that California is within its legal rights.

"An agency that has no power to regulate has no power to preempt the states, according to case law. When the FCC repealed the 2015 Open Internet Order, it said it had no power to regulate broadband internet access providers. That means the FCC cannot prevent the states from adopting net neutrality protections because the FCC's repeal order removed its authority to adopt such protections," said van Schewick."

"“There’s a lot of confusion about why people care so much about what California is doing,” said Barbara van Schewick, director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University’s law school.

“California is the fifth largest economy in the world and the most populous state. So if all of California is covered by net neutrality, that makes a big difference," she said. "But the California net neutrality bill is the first one that includes all of the protections in the 2015 order.”"

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From the First Amendment to Net Neutrality. How Media Regulation Affects What We Say

Does the FCC's recent ruling on net neutrality promise more equal media access? Or will it lead to years of divisive litigation? FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will discuss implications of the new rules and the role of media regulation in creating a free press; Victor Pickard of the University of Pennsylvania will look at how media regulation choices in the 1940s affect us today; Stanford's Morgan Weiland will explain what the proposed federal shield law means for journalists.

A Brave New Era? Or, Back to the Future? Are we in 1934? 1993? Or, 2015? The FCC’s order on the open internet – What did the FCC really do and what will it mean for internet service providers, online music and video companies, e-commerce companies, transit providers and consumers?

On 24th February, the 2015 Digital Leaders Annual Lecture, ‘Digital Democracy,’ will take place at the Houses of Parliament.

The lecture will be hosted by Chloe Smith MP; the lecturer is Dr. Ben Scott, Senior Advisor to the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation in Washington DC and a Visiting Fellow at the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung in Berlin.

The days are numbered for federal net neutrality regulations. In response, some states are working on their own versions to prevent internet service providers (ISP) from blocking, slowing or charging more for some web traffic. Oregon, Washington and several other states have made new rules, but a bill working its way through the California legislature would go the furthest. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford Law School, about how a state can regulate a business that crosses state lines.